US telecommunications equipment maker CommScope will acquire Arris, in a $7.4B deal valued at $5.69 billion, with the difference comprised of CommScope’s assumption of Arris’s debt. As part of the deal, the Carlyle Group will make a $1M equity investment in CommScope for an approximate 16% stake in the new company.
CommScope’s CEO Eddie Edwards has claimed the two companies’ product lines are complementary, and that the combined company will “enable end-to-end wired and wireless communications infrastructure solutions that neither company could otherwise achieve on its own.”
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

For journalists who follow the latest news and trends in consumer electronics, IHS Markit analysts will be available for commentary ahead of and onsite at IFA 2018 in Berlin, Germany, from August 31 to September 5, 2018.

Display shipments for notebook PCs are forecast to increase by 5 percent in 2017 to 177 million units compared to the previous year, while notebook PC unit shipments are expected to remain flat during the same period.

The production of Q (quarter) panels is an emerging business model for Chinese and Taiwanese tablet panel makers which shifts more of the panel production process to Chinese solution providers. Through this process, Jason Hsu, senior analyst in IHS, reports that both the panel maker and the solution provider benefit.

Connectivity in cars is nowadays mainly driven by the need to support physical interfaces to consumer devices. Smartphones, Portable Media Players, as well as removable media products and now (media) Tablets already play a significant role in in-vehicle infotainment systems and are expected to even more in the near future.

Connectivity is one area in automotive which is showing a significant growth and is expected to further trigger incremental semiconductor component growth in vehicles which are already full of electronics.